


The Improvement of Human Reason

by SylvanWitch



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, reading is sexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:38:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Vane may not enjoy reading himself, but he gets a great deal of pleasure out of watching Flint read.





	The Improvement of Human Reason

Flint is never wholly still, even when he’s got a book in front of him. Right now, for example, he has his lower lip fastened between his teeth, and his eyebrows have just shot toward his hairline like a sail being run up at the first hint of hot breath after long days in the doldrums, and he’s already moving his finger to turn the page, even though he’s not anywhere near the end of it yet.

Vane hasn’t said anything, of course. He may not enjoy reading himself, but he gets a great deal of pleasure out of watching Flint read, which is not the first but may definitely be the most egregious sign that this thing between them has gone too far.

He shouldn’t find delight in the way Flint expresses surprise or disdain or the blankness of deep hurt, which falls like a stone wall over his features when something he’s reading strikes too close to his heavy bones or the heart of him.

Fuck, Vane shouldn’t even know that’s what Flint is feeling.

But he does.

And it isn’t just that he’s been balls-deep inside the man on more than one occasion nor that once—this last time—they were face to face, and he could see in the crow’s feet at the corners of Flint’s eyes and by the turning up of his lips and by a certain softness hiding somewhere back in his expression that he was getting something more out of it than Vane might be putting in.

Well, aside from the obvious, that is.

And it wouldn’t bother him at all if it were merely an imbalance of power. He could use what he had found on Flint’s face last night to leverage something out of him, some promise or power he didn’t yet have.

Except, goddamnit to hell if Vane doesn’t suspect that his own eyes have, now and again of late, held exactly the same kind of fondness that verges on…more.

And that just won’t do.

He lets his boots hit the floor with a slap, and Flint, who doesn’t startle—never that—turns one of those inquiring eyebrows on him.

“That’s it. We’re done,” Vane says, as if they’d interrupted a discussion so that Flint could get in a chapter or two, and now he’s returned to his point.

The eyebrow doesn’t change position, but his lip gets that thin look that means he’s angry, and a certain hardness comes into his eyes that many another man has had the good sense to recognize as a fucking excellent reason to get the hell out of the room.

Vane isn’t any other man.

“Shouldn’t there be a vote?” Flint asks then, voice that carefully neutral tone that usually presages blood and screaming.

Vane does an exaggerated visual sweep, tempted to make his hands into a scope just to emphasize his point: “No one else here, is there?”

“Captain’s word breaks a tie,” Flint notes coolly, quoting the usual articles.

“There are two captains here,” Vane reminds him, wanting to stand but loath to do so when Flint is still relaxed in his chair, bloody book still open in his hands, as if he’s going back to it just as soon as he’s settled this little matter between them.

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Flint observes, and now there is something dangerous in his voice, the kind of casual observation he makes before someone takes a tumble from the yard or finds himself unexpectedly holding a pike between his ribs.

Vane stands now, unable to be seated while threat thrums in the air between them. He paces, his boots sounding thunderous in the tense quiet.

Flint is made of fire and stone in his seat, but a movement catches Vane’s attention. The book is trembling, pages a-flutter like a gull’s wings when a storm has brought it to the deck.

Vane stops moving, eyes that can see a ship hull-down on the horizon noticing now the tic at the edge of Flint’s lips and the tightness around his eyes that betray his true feelings.

There is a blue flutter at his throat and his shoulders are taut as an anchor chain in a high gale.

Vane closes the distance between them, takes the book out of Flint’s unresisting hands, and steps between his knees.

“You wouldn’t,” Vane says, meaning a lot of things (challenge me, kill me, let me walk out of here), and intoning it like an observation, not a command. 

But Flint’s never met an ultimatum—explicit or implied—that he didn’t treat like a declaration of war, and by the flash of heat in Flint’s eyes, Vane can see his mistake: Never close on an enemy without a weapon in your hand.

Too late now to back down, though, and anyway, brazening it out is Vane’s general approach to disaster.

Even so, he’s not expecting Flint to come out of the chair like an explosion, throwing Vane back against the nearest wall, shoving a knee between his thighs, baring his teeth and coming for his throat while the china stacked on the shelf overhead rattles itself to the edge and plummets to chiming ruin on the floor.

“She’s going to kill you,” Vane manages, referring to the woman whose house they've borrowed, but he's so turned on his throat is tight with need and he sounds like a stranger to himself.

“She’ll get in line,” Flint promises, fastening his teeth on the corded muscle of Vane’s neck just above his shoulder.

A shot of heat goes through Vane and his knees tremble. He hits his head hard when he throws it back to give Flint more room. A hand is down his pants, punishing his cock, and he hears with horror a sound like pleading coming out from between his clenched teeth.

Flint’s hand is callused and brutal, stripping him with a calculated ferocity that walks the fine, fine line between pleasure and pain.

Vane struggles to take a full breath as Flint works his teeth in the muscle, making him shudder and want to beg—stop, never stop, oh fuck me, god fuck me—and then he hears himself, the high, rough whine punched out of him with every stroke, and he remembers, vaguely, that he was supposed to be ending this.

He brings his hand up to cup the back of Flint’s head, to press him closer, and drops his other hand to Flint’s wrist, squeezing between the tendons the way he would to disarm an enemy foolish enough to close with him like this. 

They stop like a ship striking a reef—shocking and absolute—and damned if Vane isn’t caught between the teeth and the hard place, sure to be torn up in either case.

“You don’t have anything to prove,” he says then, his voice rough, breathing fractured.

“Neither do you,” Flint answers at last, releasing Vane’s neck, which should feel like a victory, though his cock is so hard he fears it might burst and his balls ache ferociously. Except there’s such a weight of history in Flint’s words that it’s almost a confession, and without considering the consequences—instinct now, not recklessness—he tightens his hand on the back of Flint’s neck and draws him closer.

Flint blows out a hard breath and pulls his hand free of Vane’s breeches, sags against him, heavy and solid and hot. Vane wraps one arm around his waist and drops the other across those broad shoulders and holds on.

Flint is breathing like he’s just fought a pitched battle, but he is otherwise silent except for what the minute tremors in his body signify. Vane says nothing, does nothing except abide, anchoring Flint, feeling his solidness against him, ignoring the welling tenderness in him that threatens to damn them both.

He will not give it voice.

After long moments of silence growing tense with unspoken things, Flint pulls back and looks at Vane, letting him see a truth in his eyes that turns Vane’s belly to ice and somewhat discourages his neglected cock.

He shakes his head, feels the muscles in his jaw tic as he grinds his teeth against what he’s feeling.

“Damn you,” he says at last, the words strangled out of him.

Flint’s smirk would frighten the devil himself back down to the deep blue. “Too late,” he husks, and fuck if he’s not right.

Well, what the hell? His life was always going to come to a sharp close at the end of a short rope. Might as well make the best of it while he’s on his way down. His answering smile has teeth of its own, and he tilts his hips, grinding on Flint’s knee, making it clear what he expects for this exchange of souls.

Flint barks a laugh, licks a stripe up Vane’s long neck, and drops his hand back into Vane’s breeches.

Vane wastes no time returning the favor, intent to give as good as he gets, taking a mouthful of Flint’s impressive shoulder, biting a shout out of him, and tightening his fist like a vice until they’re both a shuddering mess.

When they’ve wiped off and shared a few swallows of some rotgut that’ll strip the skin off his innards, Flint moves back to his chair, retrieves his book from where Vane had dropped it, and resumes his reading as though they hadn’t just stripped each other naked in every way but the literal sense.

“Hey,” Vane says, propping his booted feet up on the table and leaning back in his chair. 

Flint’s eyebrow is the only indication that he’s listening.

“Read to me?”

That gets a reaction, one that Vane would find satisfying if he weren’t a vicious pirate bent on pillaging the world of gold and glory. Flint’s eyes slide from disbelief to surprise to delight in the time it takes for him to realize Vane is serious, and then he turns back a few pages, clears his throat, and begins.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the story is taken from the book I imagine Flint reading to Vane: Simon Ockley's _The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan by Ibn Tufail (Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Tufail al-Qasi)  
>  Newly Translated from the Original Arabick_ (1708) about a boy who grows up on an island in the Indian Ocean, far away from the influence of mankind. It seems like the kind of story Flint (and Vane) would enjoy, though perhaps for different reasons.


End file.
